


Seven Songs for Something Like Salvation

by proxydialogue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, P.S. I'm not a poet, as in a poem, narrative poetry, seriously i apologize for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can remember carrying the weight of Dean's damned rock and roll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Songs for Something Like Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> Archived from LJ. Orig pub: 6/12/2011

There is a children's song:  
 _He's got the whole world_  
  _in his hands,_  
 _the whole world_ ,  
full  
of small voices singing  
 _the sun and the moon,_  
 _the mommies and the daddies,_  
 _the sisters and the brothers,_    
He hears them always,  
and the others:   
The choirs and the dishwashers,  
rock stars, bus drives,   
old friends,  
the cotton/the Egyptian/the women/  
the slaves of the  
— _He's got the whole world in his hands_ —  
  
  


 the Past.   
  
  


 He stands in it,  
it pools and ripples around his ankles,  
washes the abrasive sands between his toes.  
He kneels down and submerges himself,  
looks upon the prologue  
to the first moment of his life.   
  
  


He was bold in his existence,   
charged from the gate   
of Heaven;  
written in lean prayers and solid ideas.   
To go Beneath.   
(There, a primordial tremor of doubt,  
like a heartbeat:  
his first pulse)  
The foundation of Castiel, angel of the Lord:  
A faith  
like a rock.  
  
  


Proud.   
Tall.  
An arrow—  
not a mouth—  
 _Nothing ever got to me_.  
It was he that set Hell alight  
in white fire, to burn away the shadows.  
Not realizing   
that the shadows were all that protected his ignorance.   
  
  


He cut his way down, an easy swath of toil,  
and took his first breath  
(taste of sulfur, rot and ash)  
there at the bottom.   
  
  


Twenty years twice.   
Where'd they go?   
  
  


He can recall the return,  
carrying the weight of Dean's words and his  
Damned  
rock and roll.   
Off key and pleasant while he carved,  
(and Castiel, finally beginning to feel the heat, listened)  
then later  
the sun on his skin as he pulled himself from the ground  
like a question without curiosity.   
  
  


He moves on.  
He pushes past the breaking on the shore,  
stepping carefully on the shards and shells  
until the sand is smooth.  
Just  _there_  he stops  
to dip down again.   
  
  


His borrowed body, his instrument,   
 thrummed that night.   
They came to him  
because he went to Dean with a will  
(foreshadowed by the music playing  
in the back of Dean's subconscious.)  
They caught him  
because in the gasp of his first fear  
his heels tried to fly before his wings.    
  
  


_Don't take me_ ,  
as the ceiling and panic crashed  
on top of him.  
He had a chilled and unwell premonition  
of the Paradise City.   
  
  


 They took him home.   
  
  


 He rises  
and stumbles under the unexpected tumble  
of his second death  
(which was not a death at all;  
only another interlude.)  
The salt burns his eyes.   
  
  


The grass was green and brown in Kansas.  
"Cas,  
are you God?"   
He was remade with the song   
behind his tongue.   
God put it there   
like a lily on a new grave.   
  
  


 Now, occasionally,  
as he is balancing the geography  
of ninety saints and sinners together,  
it strikes him.   
 _I think I'm going bald._  
And he laughs _._

 

He sputters and coughs,  
wades out until the bitterness laps his chest.   
  
  


 His second walk through Hell was white hot,   
and he had to cast his own shadows  
to hide behind,  
guided Sam out gently by the hand.   
A week later Dean (no honest man)   
negotiated a web of tarmac and road signs,  
on his way to Atlantic City  
to talk to a man about a deal.   
  
  


 Castiel followed behind him   
just in case.   
  
  


 The current pulls him  
sea sick,   
through the last months of his life.  
While he kicks, it splashes up  
into his nose.   
  
  


Everything he'd ever had,   
he let it spill gladly into   
them.   
  
  


 He was an arrow  
again,  
for them.   
He was solid  
again,  
for them.   
He was—  
  
  


 he was.   
And they treated him with the tired love  
of kind men for strange children.   
  
  


 He has time for one more,  
curls his knees into his chest and  
sinks.   
One more,   
a favor to someone he'd never given enough love to before,  
and then he must swim back,  
and dump the water from his pockets.  
  
  


 The last days. 

 

 Castiel sat alone in the cold melting snow  
on a stone bench.   
"Let me tell you my story."   
  
  


 He stands just out of sight  
and listens to every word.   
He wants very badly to reach out with his arms  
and answer.   
 _Oh, my child—_  
weighed down by rock and roll,  
driven apart by the unnatural beating inside him:  
his pulse  
(just a false clock ticking down  
the precursors to cardiac arrest,)  
 _I hear you._    
  
  


 He floats up to the surface and stands,  
(glances east as he leaves,  
a restless farewell)  
walks across the ocean back into the cradle of creation.   
He steps gingerly over the angel's final moments.   
  
  


 Dean, as he tried to breathe life back into Castiel,  
with regrets,   
with apologies.   
No.  
His life was over.   
His eternity is begun.   
  
  


 As he pauses on the shore  
and waits a moment in the parody   
of taking a breath,  
one last wave washes up and cleans his feet.  
  
  


 He looks down and crouches to touch his   
hand in.   
Curious.   
This is not a memory of Castiel's,  
but it  _is_ a part of his life.   
  
  


 When Castiel was going home and Dean was still driving,  
putting miles between his heart  
and Stull,  
he played a cassette tape with a song  
the angel never heard.   
It was murmured under Dean's breath  
into the space in the passenger seat  
left by the absence  
of another friend.   
"Give me something to believe in."   
  
  


 He hears it  _now,_  
warm against his knuckles—  
  
  


 He's got the whole world in his hands. 

**Author's Note:**

> rock songs in order of reference: 
> 
> 'Like a Rock' Bob Seger
> 
> 'Paradise City' Guns n Roses 
> 
> 'I think I'm Going Bald' Rush
> 
> 'Atlantic City' Bruce Springsteen 
> 
> 'Restless Farewell' Bob Dylan
> 
> 'Something to Believe In' Poison


End file.
